What would Jesus have us do about the border?
By Esther J. Cepeda
The Washington Post
Although we live in a country where organized religion is mostly out of vogue, there are still plenty of people who are familiar with the teachings of Jesus Christ — and who can’t square them with how supposedly God-fearing Republicans inhumanely view migrants and refugees at the U.S. border.
“The rejection of Christian teaching on this issue [of immigration] is pretty much a job requirement in the Trump administration,” noted Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson in a piece citing examples of Republican hypocrisy on the issue. “Evangelicals insist on the centrality and inerrancy of scripture and condemn society for refusing to follow biblical norms; and yet, when it comes to verse after verse requiring care for the stranger, they don’t merely ignore this mandate; they oppose it.”
But are we painting Christians with too broad a brush?
That’s certainly the opinion of the Evangelical Immigration Table, which bills itself as a broad coalition of evangelicals who advocate for immigration reform that is consistent with biblical values.
Members include Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Shirley Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities; and Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. They want to make sure their fellow Christians know that it is both possible and practical to use the Bible as a guide in approaching immigrants and immigration policy.
“We have the science and the technology to both have a secure border and to have legal immigration; we can do both,” says Anderson in one of the group’s videos, which is titled “Pro-Security, Pro-Compassion.”
In that same video, Jo Anne Lyon, the global ambassador for the Wesleyan Church, says, “Yes, secure the national borders, but we want borders that are secured, not closed.”
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